"Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will be the subject of an ABC "Nightline" program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.

The tapes are being called the "smoking gun" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The panel's chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to give the Sun details of the content or context of the recordings, saying only that they were provided to his committee by former federal prosecutor John Loftus.

Loftus has been tight-lipped about the tapes, telling the Sun only that he received them from a "former American military intelligence analyst."

On Tuesday night, Loftus told Cybercast News Service that ABC's "Nightline" would air an "extensive report" on the tapes Wednesday night. Loftus also described an ABC News teaser, which reportedly contains audio of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with WMD. "Nightline will have a lot more," said Loftus.

The tapes are scheduled to be revealed to the public Friday morning at the opening session of The Intelligence Summit, a conference which brings together intelligence professionals from around the world.

Loftus is president of The Intelligence Summit. Its advisory council includes generals, a former FBI official, a former senior Israeli Mossad officer and the former chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, according to information posted on the summit Web site. Currently a private attorney, Loftus says he works pro bono to help intelligence agents obtain lawful permission to declassify and publish the "hidden secrets of our times."

He purportedly has held some of the highest security clearances in the world with special access to NATO Cosmic, CIA codeword and Top Secret nuclear files.

This year's Intelligence Summit will bring together top terrorism experts including Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of "Funding Evil," 9/11 investigator Jean-Charles Brisard, author of "Zarqawi: the New Face of Al-Qaida;" former CIA agent Michael Scheurer, author of "Imperial Hubris," and Richard Marcinko, former head of SEAL Team Six, and author of "Rogue Warrior."

The Intelligence Summit will be featured not only in the Wednesday "Nightline" report but also on ABC World News Tonight."

Let's see if the rest of the MSM has anything to report on this or will they remain on "peppergate" until Dick Cheney leaps in repentance from the Washington Mounument.

UPDATE: V: Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse advises caution, citing the Duelfer Report. However, the MSM misreported the findings of that report last year (didn't fit the script). Fact is that Duelfer was on the heals of the story of whether or not the WMD had transfered out of Iraq but had to stand down due to "security concerns". See this Newsmax article from last year for more. Point is his report left more questions unanswered than it answered.

"One of the most dramatic moments on the 12 hours of tape comes when Saddam predicts --during a meeting in the mid 1990s -- a terrorist attack on the United States. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2nd and told the British as well & that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who says Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."

Sounds like a bad "Cagney" impersonation....."I'm not saying I would do it, but say, you know, hypothetically, someone would have an accident...."

Sure Saddam.....sure.

BTW....expect the MSM to discredit this report from the start. They have a war room for such.

UPDATE: VII: Per Newsmax - more tapes coming out this weekend. Also Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard who has been working this story since the beginning like a true reporter should, comments. Just a further note: The Administration knows these tapes will vindicate the war and prove that Saddam had WMD but hid them, and further had designs to harm Americans and support terrorism. So what's the hold up?

What do they say? There is a reason President Bush let's his critics flap their gums - he has the "Ace in the Hole" - wait and see.